In deployment of networks, such as, data networks or packet data networks, there are commonly encountered scenarios which involve the need for hand-off of network traffic. For example, an access network (e.g., via an Ethernet based level 2 (L2) transport network, such as G.8032, MPLS-TP, etc.) may need to aggregate client traffic and resiliently hand-off to a Metro/Core (IP/MPLS) network domain. Resilient hand-off may be accomplished by a multi-homed (e.g. dual-homed) approach wherein the multi-homed network is served by more than one internet service provider (ISP) or has multiple interfaces with one or more internet protocol (IP) address, such that when one link (e.g. one of the upstream or downstream links) fails, traffic is not sent on the failed link.
Conventional resilient hand-off techniques can include a virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP), which is a computer networking protocol that provides for automatic assignment of available IP routers to participating hosts. VRRP can increase the availability and reliability of routing paths via automatic default gateway selections on an IP sub-network. VRRP is typically employed by routers (e.g. core routers) to provide hand-off resiliency. However, conventional approaches, such as VRRP, are limited in that they marginalize the value proposition that can be provided by the L2 transport network (e.g., in the access network). The conventional approaches also fail to provide flexible and technology independent solutions for resilient hand-off
Moreover, due to organization partitioning in networks (e.g., data vs. transport), it is desirable for transport organizations to control the resilient hand-off mechanism provided by their network.